When it set up its own rival in the tuberculosis drugs market, Commercial Solvents were forced to continue supplying a company named Zoja with the raw materials for the drug. Zoja was the only market competitor, so without the court forcing supply, all competition would have been eliminated.

That looks more like ending abuse than propping up a competitor. They were dominant supplier of a commodity chemical that they stopped supplying a competitor that used it for competing finished products, because of the advantage they would get from eliminating that competitor.

It would be like if Apple cornered the market on Copper and then decided to stop supplying Samsung. A judgement to force Apple to supply copper to Samsung, wouldn't be propping up Samsung, it would be ending monopoly abuse.

It would be like if Apple cornered the market on Copper and then decided to stop supplying Samsung. A judgement to force Apple to supply copper to Samsung, wouldn't be propping up Samsung, it would be ending monopoly abuse.

Doesn't have to be a physical good, you know. Imagine something like ... Apple cornering the market on APIs to certain Apple products, if those products have more that 38% marketshare.

Recall how the EU forced MS put many of their core protocols on the market at EU-decreed 'fair prices' and documented to EU-decreed standards of quality. And fined MS a billion dollars for not documenting quickly enough, nor guessing what prices EU would consider to be "fair" quickly enough.

(Note, I'm not trying to re-open the debate about what EU did. I'm just pointing out recent history, because it provides clues about what could happen next.)

It would be like if Apple cornered the market on Copper and then decided to stop supplying Samsung. A judgement to force Apple to supply copper to Samsung, wouldn't be propping up Samsung, it would be ending monopoly abuse.

Doesn't have to be a physical good, you know. Imagine something like ...

My only point was that no one is required to prop up competitors, just not abuse them. I don't want to get into ancient history on Microsoft abuses and punishments.

My only point was that no one is required to prop up competitors, just not abuse them. I don't want to get into ancient history on Microsoft abuses and punishments.

Which is technically true, but actually false for practical reasons. When you are the last man standing in an important industry, you get looked at a lot harder for anti-trust. Furthermore, it's better to keep the competitor you know alive than to welcome brand new competitors (which are often spun off by employees who have left your company).

It would be like if Apple cornered the market on Copper and then decided to stop supplying Samsung. A judgement to force Apple to supply copper to Samsung, wouldn't be propping up Samsung, it would be ending monopoly abuse.

Doesn't have to be a physical good, you know. Imagine something like ...

My only point was that no one is required to prop up competitors, just not abuse them. I don't want to get into ancient history on Microsoft abuses and punishments.

In the EU, Microsoft is forced to advertise its competitor's browsers on its products.

In the EU, Microsoft is forced to advertise its competitor's browsers on its products.

That has nothing to do with ailing competitor and propping them up, either. It is remedy for the perceived abuse of attempting to leverage the OS monopoly, into a Web Monopoly by bundling the Browser. But being government it is lagging and largely pointless now.

When you are the last man standing in an important industry, you get looked at a lot harder for anti-trust.

No, when your share gets north of about 70 per cent, you get looked at a lot harder for anti-trust. There's nothing magic about 80, 90, or 97. Certainly nothing magically different between 97 and 100, which is where MS was at its peak.

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Furthermore, it's better to keep the competitor you know alive than to welcome brand new competitors (which are often spun off by employees who have left your company).

Part of why monopolies get scrutiny is precisely because the barriers to entry are high or can be analyzed to show they are high. If any six employees with an idea can form a credible company and have a reasonable prospect of establishing themselves, then anti-trust scrutiny would be less at any level of dominance.

In any case, keeping some weak sister alive would have nothing whatever to say to your six employees spinning off their own company.

In the US, at least, there isn't any magic. So far as I know, it is 100 per cent about behavior. If you were at 100 per cent and (for instance) any six members of your company could credibly found an alternative, but they were just floundering, it's not a problem. If you were at 100 per cent and no one could enter the business at all because of your actual practices, then you're going to get sued. But, you'd get sued for the same practices at 90 per cent.

And, MS at "only" 97 per cent was no protection whatsoever against getting sued on three continents that I know about.

Nor did whatever percentage it was of surviving "BUNCH" operatives prevent IBM from getting sued not just by the DOJ, but by private firms.

Exactly how would the magic 100 have increased either MS' or IBM's liability as the field actually laid out? I can't determine how it helped a bit. They were sued plenty as it stands.

And, what possible difference could it make on any reasonable economic theory? Three per cent does not meaningfully discipline 97 per cent.

Nokia is being hit with a class action lawsuit for failing to disclose how bad its Windows Phone business is performing. My guess is that the lawsuit itself will not amount to much in the way of penalties, but some interesting documents could be produced along the way.

Microsoft Consumer Electronics - The gift that keeps on killing its friends... Plays for Sure and now Windows Phone. And just to moderate my own snarky comments, would anyone build a Mac Clone again? I don't think so, and for the same reason why do people keep getting in bed with Microsoft for these types of products when they have shown that they can only compete in this space when the build the whole widget, as they did with the xBox 360?

We're almost halfway through the quarter. The next report and any documents from this suit will be illuminating. As a prospective shareholder I believe Nokia would do well to more openly share info on the breakdown of its Lumia sales; on the other hand such info has competitive value so I can also see keeping that info guarded.

I always wonder why people think things like this are a deal. It isn't like it is moving from $99 to $39, so it 60% off. It is more like it is moving $399 to $339, so it is 15% off.

As a matter of sheer math, I agree with you.

But, people have responded to these subsidies and it is, after all, the world one lives in.

The subsidy (in the US for sure) is simply a reality. If you don't upgrade every two years, for instance, most of us are handing the phone companies extra money. So, to a degree, the subsidy is a sunk cost and to that extent, should be dismissed from one's thinking. You are, in other words, going to pay that anyway. So then it becomes all about the "visible" price.

I think that there is getting to be a serious question here about the WPx and Lumia value proposition. At some point, as much as I like price cuts, one begins to doubt the value of something that goes in a few months from 200 to 100 to (nothing after rebate) and all the way back up to 40 dollars. That's so even though there is a residual sum hidden in the subsidy. In fact, this is a case where the subsidy makes it look worse.

I checked their stock for shits and giggles just now (forgot why exactly) and they've taken another hard nosedive around April 10th. What happened there? Their market cap is under 12bn now. It starts getting near the ranges where some assclown can just swoop in with spare cash and take it. It would be hilarious if it were Apple, for the sake of patents and fucking with everyone else.

I checked their stock for shits and giggles just now (forgot why exactly) and they've taken another hard nosedive around April 10th. What happened there? Their market cap is under 12bn now. It starts getting near the ranges where some assclown can just swoop in with spare cash and take it. It would be hilarious if it were Apple, for the sake of patents and fucking with everyone else.

And the stock will continue to tumble. I suspect at some point they'll probably delist. A lot worse is yet to come before things start to look up.

I checked their stock for shits and giggles just now (forgot why exactly) and they've taken another hard nosedive around April 10th. What happened there? Their market cap is under 12bn now. It starts getting near the ranges where some assclown can just swoop in with spare cash and take it. It would be hilarious if it were Apple, for the sake of patents and fucking with everyone else.

I think Microsoft would be the most likely company to pick up Nokia.

MS Insider becomes Nokia CEO, drives it into the ground, Micrsoft picks up Nokia for a pittance.

I doubt that the Microsoft shareholders will agree to this, after having spent that much spare cash on Skype, for questionable benefit. If Skype wouldn't have happened, I'd have believed in a Nokia take over.

Anyway, Nokia owns a lot of essential patents around mobile phones and GSM in particular. That has to be worth something. What's going on right now with their stock could almost be considered a reverse auction, with interested parties playing a game about how long everyone can to avoid pulling the trigger.

There are a lot of people wanting MS and Nokia to fail. I've found that these people tend to be the same ones who hate the lack of choices in the desktop market and yet are perfectly happy to have a iOS/Android duopoly. IF WP fails then it's going to be iOS/Android for a long long time. The barrier to entry due to lack of ecosystem (which takes years to build up) is just too high.

There are a lot of people wanting MS and Nokia to fail. I've found that these people tend to be the same ones who hate the lack of choices in the desktop market and yet are perfectly happy to have a iOS/Android duopoly. IF WP fails then it's going to be iOS/Android for a long long time. The barrier to entry due to lack of ecosystem (which takes years to build up) is just too high.

Thats too simplistic. The fact is there is plenty of choice today in the desktop market, at least in the consumer desktop market.

There are a lot of people wanting MS and Nokia to fail. I've found that these people tend to be the same ones who hate the lack of choices in the desktop market and yet are perfectly happy to have a iOS/Android duopoly. IF WP fails then it's going to be iOS/Android for a long long time. The barrier to entry due to lack of ecosystem (which takes years to build up) is just too high.

A competitive iOS/Android duopoly is still way more competition then it is with MS dominance in the OS space. I find it puzzling that anyone tries to make MS as some kind of champion of competition when MS is dominant in numerous markets, is making moves to lock in and expand that dominance and has a history of anti-competitive behavior.

If it has come down to needing to guilt people to buy into what they perceive to be a substandard platform in the name of competition, then MS has already lost.

The failure of WP is due to Microsoft's mismanagement across the board and MS failing to execute good and fast enough to keep up with iOS and Android. It will also hopefully mean the end of MS throwing money at its problems and to try to force things to go MS way.

IF WP fails then it's going to be iOS/Android for a long long time. The barrier to entry due to lack of ecosystem (which takes years to build up) is just too high.

So what else is new? OSes tend to degenerate down to having a very small number of providers in the majority of markets.

The only one I know of with more than a handful is the mid-range server market. Maybe the embedded market has a few more, but it's hard to turn down Linux or BSD in that market unless you have an 8048 type processor, still.

In any case, nobody has to "root"; one merely has to observe events.

MS' failure has been spectacular to date. I would have expected maybe 10 per cent or better by sheer osmosis.

There is something going on here and unfortunately it has the look of overt rejection. Either consumers don't have room in their heads for more than two offerings or else they simply watch the TV ads, see that 99 per cent of the time they say "download our iPhone or Android app" and no more and buy accordingly.

Whatever it is, it's a remarkable repudiation by a market we all know isn't full of geeks. But, they seem to have figured out that MS is the weak sister and are penalizing it accordingly.